Two top Moscow police officials were fired Wednesday after officers under them were accused of kidnapping a Belarussian businessman and his son for ransom, sending what the Kremlin hopes is a stiff warning to police chiefs nationwide that they will be held accountable for the wrongdoings of their underlings.
Moscow police chief Vladimir Kolokoltsev dismissed Colonel Vyachaslav Yakovlev and his deputy, Colonel Andrei Sidorenko, from their leadership of a department in the city's police criminal task force, or MUR.
The officials were fired for their “weak organization of work with subordinates,” police spokesman Viktor Biryukov told reporters.
The statement echoed an October order by Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev to hold senior police officials personally responsible for the misdeeds of their subordinates and came just days after President Dmitry Medvedev fired several high-ranking police generals as part of a Kremlin drive to reform the corruption-tarnished Interior Ministry. The officials at MUR, a crown jewel of the Soviet police whose officers were often featured as valiant heroes in action films, were fired just hours after three subordinates were arrested on charges of kidnapping and extortion.
The three suspects, who were not identified, are accused of abducting a Belarussian businessman and his son in the city of Troitsk, near Moscow, on Feb. 20, Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said.
Life.ru identified the suspects as a colonel and two majors.
Markin said the police officers had demanded more than 6 million rubles ($200,000) from relatives in exchange for the men's release and had later reduced the ransom to 2 million rubles during negotiations.
The police officers were detained while receiving an initial payment of 1.4 million rubles ($50,000) in a sting operation, Markin said. A Moscow region court sanctioned their arrest Wednesday.
The fast turnabout time between the arrests and the dismissals signals that the Kremlin's patience is wearing thin. Kolokoltsev, the Moscow police chief, was himself appointed by Medvedev after the president sacked his predecessor for the shooting rampage of a Moscow police major in a supermarket that killed two people in April.
Last week, Kolokoltsev dismissed another senior police official, Yury Bykov, a deputy department head in a city police precinct, after police broke up a criminal group that robbed cash carriers that included police officers who worked under Bykov.
Bykov's dismissal, however, did not come immediately after the arrests but after another police officer in his department struck a woman in a drunk-driving accident last week.
Senior police officials in several other regions have also been dismissed over their subordinates' actions in recent weeks.
The firings are helping mobilize the police force but are more of a Band-Aid approach than a long-term solution, said Mikhail Pashkin, head of the Moscow police's independent trade union.
“It is a solution but not the right one," he said, noting that a preliminary report from the Interior Ministry's internal affairs department implicated police officers in more than 5,000 crimes nationwide last year.
"You have 5,000 policeman committing crimes last year, and that means you have to fire 5,000 officials. Who is going to serve on the police force then?” Pashkin said. Maxim Agarkov, a former analyst for the Interior Ministry, said the dismissals would improve the police force only if remaining top officials received substantial increases to their salaries.
"It is the system itself that needs to be changed,” he said.
He said the head of a Moscow police precinct earns just 40,000 rubles ($1,300) a month and commands 2,000 staffers.
Medvedev ordered police reforms late last year that will include halving the number of staff in the Interior Ministry's Moscow headquarters and cutting the country's 1.2 million-member police force by 20 percent. Medvedev promised to hike the salaries of the remaining officers.